Chapter 49: Chapter 49: The Last Core A dark pool of blood spread beneath the stone platform. Rhian lay at its center, unmoving.
His body looked broken. His skin was paler than usual, lips dry, and his chest barely rising.
Cuts marked his arms, his neck, even along his side where his shirt had torn open from the strain. If someone found him now, they’d think he was dead.
But the system still glowed faintly above him.
[99%]
Just one more percent.
That was all he needed.
He couldn’t lift his arms anymore. His hands were curled at his sides, blood-caked and stiff. His mouth was still stained red from the last core he forced down.
The dull, grey remains of drained cores were scattered beside him. Over a dozen. Some cracked. Some whole but hollow. None usable.
He’d gone through all the F-ranks. Even the ones stored in Nia’s bag.
Rhian blinked slowly. His vision doubled, then steadied. His breathing rasped. Every part of him screamed for rest.
But he wasn’t done.
He turned his head slightly, jaw tight from pain. His eyes landed on one final core. The E-rank one. The same one he’d put aside earlier. He had saved it for when he broke through.
But now?
He didn’t have a choice.
He dragged his body toward it. Each movement was a crawl. His limbs barely responded. It was more like falling forward in slow motion than actual crawling. The stone scraped against his arms and chest.
He reached the core.
It pulsed faintly, still active, still dangerous.
Rhian stared at it, chest rising and falling with effort. If he took this now... before breaking through... there was no guarantee his body could handle it.
He’d heard the warnings. Read the cautions. A core above your rank could rupture your internal pathways. Kill you on the spot.
But what was the alternative?
Give up?
Let the thing inside that cave find him in this state?
Let Nia stay unconscious and unprotected?
He clenched his jaw, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth as he reached forward.
The E-rank core sat in his hand, heavier than the others. The pressure it gave off was different too.
Rhian exhaled slowly.
And brought it to his mouth.
Rhian stretched his tongue, placing the core in his mouth, and shut it tight.
The moment his jaw closed, the energy exploded.
His eyes rolled back.
A wave of divine force surged down his throat like boiling tar. It didn’t flow, it invaded. His body convulsed as raw power ripped through every nerve. Blood sprayed from his nose in thick lines.
His ears bled seconds later, and then his eyes, tears of red running down his cheeks. Veins bulged across his arms and neck. His stomach tightened like he was being strangled from the inside.
He couldn’t even scream.
His throat locked up, his lungs seized. His back arched off the stone, muscles pulled tight. Skin along his arms cracked in thin lines, oozing red. Even his fingertips split.
He gripped the ground hard, fingers clawing at stone. His body trembled violently.
More blood poured from him.
From his mouth, his ears, even through places no one dared name.
The core in his mouth had turned to ash the moment he bit into it, but the energy was still flooding his system, overwhelming it.
He was drowning in his own blood. His heart slammed against his ribs like it was trying to escape. Bones creaked under the pressure. His regeneration tried to respond, but it was too slow. Too weak to counter what was happening.
His body rejected the power.
His divine core strained, stretched, and screamed inside him. Every inch of him burned like he was being melted alive. His skin steamed.
For a moment, everything went still. His vision dimmed.
One final pulse of pain ran through his spine, and then—
Blackness.
.
.
.
.
In the deep end of a crack-like ravine, the air was thick and unmoving. No light reached this far, only shadows layered over rough stone and stagnant water.
On a stone platform, a young woman lay motionless. Her breath was shallow. It was hard to tell if she was alive. Her skin was pale, lips dry, arms limp at her sides.
Not far from her, another figure lay on the ground.
He was covered in blood. It pooled around and over him. His body looked worse than hers, bent, broken, lifeless. But then his chest moved.
A groan escaped his mouth.
His fingers twitched. Then his arms jerked sharply. His body twisted in strange ways, bones shifting under the skin, joints popping out and slamming back in. The sound of cracking echoed off the stone.
More blood poured from him. Thick, dark, almost black now. His back arched. His neck snapped sideways and jerked back.
His legs shook violently.
The blood around him didn’t slow down. If anything, it looked like his body was still bleeding from places it shouldn’t. Every movement brought more of it.
His body kept bending unnaturally. Wrists locking. Shoulders dislocating and snapping back. It was like something inside was forcing itself out through muscle and bone.
The spasms dragged on for minutes. His body flailed in uneven jerks, the platform stained fully beneath him.
Blood soaked into the stone and spread outward in slow, irregular waves.
His limbs kicked without control, his muscles tightening and releasing like his nerves were misfiring one after another.
At times his back arched so hard his heels and shoulders were the only parts touching the surface.
Then he collapsed again, his arms twitching weakly, breath sputtering.
The sound of bones cracking kept going. Shoulders, knees, ribs, each shift sharp and sickening.
His jaw locked tight until blood slipped from the corners of his mouth.
His system didn’t accept what he did easily.
His skin pulled tight in places. Veins along his arms and neck thickened, swelling and darkening like the blood itself was different.
His breathing came in broken rhythm, sometimes gasping, sometimes barely there.
His lip split from pressure. Blood ran down over his chin like tap water. The whole scene was brutal. His clothes were torn, soaked through, ripped open across his back and sides.
Eventually, the movement slowed. His hands twitched, then stopped. His chest shuddered, then settled. One final convulsion passed through his spine, and then it ended.
His body dropped still.
He lay on his back, arms to the side, legs bent, face turned slightly away. His chest rose, slow and shallow, just enough to show he was still breathing. But the rest of him didn’t move.
The blood around him was thick. His skin had lost nearly all color.
He looked dead.
More dead than the girl besides him